ABSTRACT
Among the many indispensable concepts associated with feminist theory, objectification holds a privileged position. The claim that patriarchy renders women things, thus robbing them of a host of qualities central to personhood-moral agency, self-worth, autonomy, to name a few-connects a disparate group of social realities that otherwise might remain conceptually separate. Paradigmatic examples of objectification (the phenomenon of sexual violence, or hypersexualized representations of women’s bodies, or the ways in which reproductive technology is organized and experienced) clarify ways in which women are constructed as inferior to men, and provide compelling arguments for the need for gender equality.
